AuthorTopic: Complete Dominion rules document (Read 14678 times)

This is a compilation and a rewriting of all rules from all the rulebooks as well as all online rulings by the game designer. Up to date as of January 2019.

The aim is a document where you can learn and easily understand how to play Dominion at the same time as everything is included, stated unambiguously, clearly and accurately. All official online rulings are presented together with the printed rules seamlessly and in a logical grouping and ordering.

A large part of the document is the Card Reference, where every card is listed alphabetically with explanations of how to use it if there is some part that might be unclear - and of course also including any online rulings made.

I'm finally done with my massive rules document, which is partially based on the rules FAQ I made on BGG.

I appreciate all feedback, especially about any mistakes, inconsistencies or things that are written in an unclear or confusing way. I wanted to make a document that is understandable to the average gamer and at the same time has all the rules written completely unambiguously. (It was not easy.) This is not a compilation of official rulebooks, as I mostly rewrote stuff. I tried to generalize rules, so that for instance the card descriptions don't have to repeat every mechanic. They still do restate confusing stuff though.

I managed to release it before Empires. When that comes out, I have to do a major overhaul of course.

It feels a bit awkward to use non-basic cards like Bridge Troll and Quarry is the basic introduction to the phases section. Then again, perhaps you did that on purpose so that people don't see Quarry later and wonder if it works the same as a Silver in terms of playing treasure.

You have a line "Six promo cards are released as of 2015:" that is followed by the list of six promo cards and the promo event. Presumably you would do best to insert "One promo event hsa been released as of 2015:" before the promo event.

In "Abilities between turns" you mention "Between turns, the player who last had a turn is considered to be the current player, and so will resolve between-turn abilities first." It is perhaps good to mention that he also gets to choose which ability is resolved first, if there are multiple abilities which he should resolve. Also, you might want to explicitly mention that at this moment this player is not possessed (even if he was possessed during the last turn), so he makes the choice himself. (After writing this I noticed that this is explained in the Possession reference, but I still think it should be included here as well)

About the lose track rule: you might want to mention that shuffling your deck will cause every ability to lose track of every card in your deck (even if the top card happens to be still the top card after shuffling). Now that I say this, I actually have a rule question myself: is this also true if your deck consists of only 1 card? So if I have 1 card in my deck, and I shuffle my deck, will abilities lose track of that card in your deck?

It feels a bit awkward to use non-basic cards like Bridge Troll and Quarry is the basic introduction to the phases section. Then again, perhaps you did that on purpose so that people don't see Quarry later and wonder if it works the same as a Silver in terms of playing treasure.

You might be right, and I'll look into that for the next version. The thing was that I wanted those two cards to be in there. I first chose a bunch of cards to represent the most common mechanics, and then placed them around the document in places that seemed good. I didn't need a simple Action and Treasure card, because those simple mechanics are represented by several of the other cards anyway. But then of course it creates the situation you're talking about...

p31: Band of Misfits describes how it works if it gets trashed with Transmute while it's imitating a card. I don't believe there's currently any way for Transmute (which trashes from your hand) to trash a Band of Misfits that's imitating something (and which must therefore be in play), so there should be no need to mention that.

p31: Band of Misfits describes how it works if it gets trashed with Transmute while it's imitating a card. I don't believe there's currently any way for Transmute (which trashes from your hand) to trash a Band of Misfits that's imitating something (and which must therefore be in play), so there should be no need to mention that.

You're right, thanks. That ruling about Transmute applies to Inherited Estates, but is irrelevant for BoM.

pages 6-7: Selection of Shelters or Colonies should be done based on the proportion of cards in the kingdom, not the supply (we don't include basic treasure or basic victory cards in that determination).

page 7: Give an example of a set up app that is current through Adventures.

Reading this did bring up a rules question that is not clear to me:Suppose Young Witch is chosen for the kingdom. Is the bane counted when determining whether to include Colonies or Shelters? It is a kingdom card, but not one of the original 10 selected. For example, suppose you have Young Witch, Monument, Goons, and 7 other cards from Dominion (base set). Trade Route is chosen as the bane. Should the chance of Colonies being included be 2/10 or 3/11? Similar question for the case with Shelters.

As far as your goal for this document:

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I wanted to make a document that is understandable to the average gamer and at the same time has all the rules written completely unambiguously.

I will try to write up some style comments sometime, as well, which of course you can take or leave. I don't think the document completely succeeds in being more understandable to the average gamer than simply appending all the rule books and rulings together.

I know about this very common style custom in English, but I don't think it's a requirement, and I think it's clearer to just capitalize the words that are normally capitalized.

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pages 6-7: Selection of Shelters or Colonies should be done based on the proportion of cards in the kingdom, not the supply (we don't include basic treasure or basic victory cards in that determination).

You're right. I don't like to use the word "kingdom" there though, because it's not clear that that only includes kingdom cards. I could define it, but instead I'll just write "among the kingdom cards".

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page 7: Give an example of a set up app that is current through Adventures.

Hmm. Do I have to? Those things come and go, and which one is better and more current at any time. I didn't see it as the job of this document to promote one in particular either.

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Reading this did bring up a rules question that is not clear to me:Suppose Young Witch is chosen for the kingdom. Is the bane counted when determining whether to include Colonies or Shelters? It is a kingdom card, but not one of the original 10 selected. For example, suppose you have Young Witch, Monument, Goons, and 7 other cards from Dominion (base set). Trade Route is chosen as the bane. Should the chance of Colonies being included be 2/10 or 3/11? Similar question for the case with Shelters.

Based on the suggested method, "go by the first/last card drawn", the bane is not counted. I think that's correct. I'm not sure if Donald has said something somewhere.I see that it's a little unclear in my document, because of the order of the special setup rules. I'll fix that.

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As far as your goal for this document:

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I wanted to make a document that is understandable to the average gamer and at the same time has all the rules written completely unambiguously.

I will try to write up some style comments sometime, as well, which of course you can take or leave. I don't think the document completely succeeds in being more understandable to the average gamer than simply appending all the rule books and rulings together.

Yeah, I know that part's the biggest difficulty. Appending all the rulebooks and online rulings together would not be very clear though, since there are contradictions between them, some mistakes, and imprecise language... So I'm fairly confident it's at least more understandable than doing that, even to the average gamer. But I appreciate any tips to improve it!

page 7: Give an example of a set up app that is current through Adventures.

Hmm. Do I have to? Those things come and go, and which one is better and more current at any time. I didn't see it as the job of this document to promote one in particular either.

I suggested this because I am not familiar with any and would like to know of one that implements things correctly. Alternatively, you can delete the whole section or make it a one sentence small text note, as it is not actually part of the rules.

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Based on the suggested method, "go by the first/last card drawn", the bane is not counted. I think that's correct.

That is also my understanding, but reading the way you wrote the rules had me second guessing and I could not verify 100% looking at the Prosperity and Cornucopia rule books.

page 7: Give an example of a set up app that is current through Adventures.

Hmm. Do I have to? Those things come and go, and which one is better and more current at any time. I didn't see it as the job of this document to promote one in particular either.

I suggested this because I am not familiar with any and would like to know of one that implements things correctly. Alternatively, you can delete the whole section or make it a one sentence small text note, as it is not actually part of the rules.

Jack of All Dominion is the best. I think it's just on Android, but it's wonderful and would deserve to be promoted in this rulebook.

Not done yet, but as promised, here's some style suggestions on the early parts of the document. Use them as you see fit. I split them into several posts to hopefully read better.

"Objective of the Game" section: Donald's pithier version in the original rules strikes me as better. I would stick closer to that model. If you want to talk about the phases of the game, maybe something shorter like this would work better:

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This is a game of building a deck of cards. It contains actions you can take, treasures which earn you income, and the victories which show how much better you are than that other guy to the west. Your deck starts out not able to do much, but you hope by the end of the game it will be brimming with Provinces.

On your turn you may play an action from your hand, play your treasures to buy better cards for your deck, then discard and draw a new hand of cards. When your draw pile runs dry, you shuffle both your old and new cards together to form a new draw pile, thus playing through your steadily improving deck again and again as the game continues.

Page 3. I think you should define kingdom cards rather than refer to the actual rule books. I think which cards are "kingdom cards" is the only thing in which you defer to the actual rule book.

The Card Reference (pages 30-52) can be split into Kingdom Cards and Other Cards (alphabetical within each section). Then you can define kingdom cards by all the cards listed in the Kingdom Cards section of the document.

Setup Sections:I think the Basic Setup and Special Setup sections can be combined, integrating rules from the expansions better by having the subsections not be the expansions, but the type of setup required. I think this would make it a lot more readable and be more consistent with the rest of the document.

For example, you could do something like this:

Setup

The Supply

The cards in the supply are the cards available to be bought. Place the supply piles face-up on the table, as follows.

The Kingdom: 10 piles of different Kingdom cards. They may be selected in any way you choose. Each pile of Kingdom Victory cards should include 12 copies of the card. For two player games, include only 8 copies of Victory cards. All other kingdom card piles has 10 copies of the card, unless noted otherwise below in [the section] Additional Setup.

Basic Treasure card piles: Copper (60 cards minus the starting Coppers for each player), Silver (40 cards), and Gold (30 cards). If playing with 5 or 6 players, use twice as many Coppers, Silvers, and Golds.

Basic Victory card piles: Estate, Duchy, and Province. Include 12 copies of each. If playing with two players, include 8 copies of each. If playing with 5 players, use 15 Provinces, instead. If playing with 6 players, use 18 Provinces, instead.

Curses: 10 cards in a 2-player game. Add another 10 to the pile for each additional player.

Determine whether to include Platinums and Colonies randomly based on the proportion of cards from Prosperity in the kingdom.

Small text note: One way to choose randomly based on the proportion of kingdom cards from a named expansion is to take the randomizer cards for the cards in the kingdom, shuffle them, and then draw one card. If the chosen card is from the named expansion, the draw is a success; otherwise, it is a failure.

If any card in the Kingdom has [P] in its cost, include the 16 Potion cards in the supply.

If any card in the Kingdom has the type Looter, include the Ruins pile in the supply. Shuffle the 50 Ruins cards, and from those draw and include the same number of Ruins as Curses.

Additional Setup

If you are using Events, include some randomly. No more than two are recommended. Place the Event cards on the table separately.

[[Describe by card, alphabetically, special set-up rules such as the number of cards, tokens, mats, non-supply piles to include, etc.]]

Trash

Place the Trash card on the table to indicate the trash pile (or "the trash").

Starting Deck

Each player begins the game with a deck of 10 cards: 7 Coppers and either 3 Estates or 3 Shelters. Determine whether to play with Shelters randomly, based on the proportion of cards from Dark Ages in the supply. The three Shelters are Hovel, Necropolis, and Overgrown Estate.

Starting Hand

Each player draws 5 cards from his deck to form his starting hand.

Choosing the Starting Player

Randomly choose the starting player. When playing several games, the starting player is the player to the left of the winner of the last game. If there was a tie in the previous game, randomly choose the starting player from the players that didn't win.